ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 24, 2026--
The City of St. Petersburg completed a major resilience upgrade at its Northeast Water Reclamation Facility with the installation of the patented FRA Flood Panel system from Flood Risk America, strengthening the facility’s ability to remain operational during hurricanes and storm surge events.
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According to Public Works Administrator Claude Tankersley, the project included the installation of flood panels on the facility’s filter station building and expanded to protect a total of 11 buildings across the site.
In total, the city invested just over $1 million in 100 flood panels for the Northeast facility. Now fully installed, the panels safeguard critical infrastructure and equipment essential to the final stages of wastewater treatment.
“This was a very big upgrade,” said Tankersley. “We are now at the point that if we were to receive a storm similar to Helene, we would not have to shut down this plant.”
The Northeast Water Reclamation Facility was taken offline for the first time during Hurricane Helene and again during Hurricane Milton, which accelerated the city’s efforts to harden the plant. Completed improvements included elevating vulnerable equipment and installing flood panels on low-lying buildings most susceptible to storm surge.
Tankersley noted that the flood panels provide protection comparable to perimeter flood barrier systems such as an Aquafence, while offering a more targeted and cost-effective solution.
“Instead of building a wall around the entire facility, we achieved the same level of protection by attaching the panels directly to the buildings,” he said.
At the filter station, the completed installation now protects critical equipment housed in a large underground bay that had previously been inundated with saltwater flooding. Following Hurricane Helene, the bay was filled with standing water, exposing electrical systems to saltwater damage and requiring extensive repairs.
Each opening at the filter station required three flood panels, and the installed system now provides sufficient coverage for all 11 designated buildings at the Northeast facility. Tankersley emphasized that flood panels offer significant cost savings compared to elevating buildings, which could cost tens of millions of dollars per structure.
“At some point in the future, when this building and its equipment become obsolete, raising it may make sense,” he said. “But completing this flood panel installation provided a much more practical and economical solution.”
In addition to the Northeast facility, the city also completed the installation of a similar flood panel system at its Southwest Water Reclamation Facility, further strengthening St. Petersburg’s wastewater infrastructure against future storm events.
FRA Flood Panel system installed at Lift Station 85
The FRA Flood Panel installed at City of St. Petersburg's Northeast Water Reclamation Facility
CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.
Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.
Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.
Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.
Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.
The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.
A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.
A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.
Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.
Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.
A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.
“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.
“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.
That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.
The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.
The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.
Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.
A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
